__________________________________________ 互户互户互户互互户互)  Merle's Mission Ezine- "The Best of the Net Straight to your Door" Feb 28th,2003 Issue #106 ISSN: #1527-3105 Edited & Published by: Merle- Merle@MerlesWorld.com http://www.MerlesWorld.com/ Tell A Friend: http://recommend-it.com/l.z.e?s=3463949 __________________________________________ 互户互户互户互互户互)  NOTE: This newsletter is by subscription only. The only way it could have ended up in your inbox was by YOUR SUBSCRIBING to it. If you no longer wish to receive it please see the link at the very bottom of this ezine and I shall never darken your doorway again. ****************************************** Donations Wanted: If you enjoy this ezine and feel you have gained valuable information from it, please make a donation through Amazon's Donation Service. Your small gifts will help support the website and this newsletter (and bones for "the boys"). http://tinyurl.com/21se ______________________________________________ Sponsor ______________________________________________ 5 Cents Each for Quality Subscribers? Where do I Sign Up? --------------------------------------------------------- Grow your newsletter by 100-1000 subscribers per day with our speedy single opt-in service. Get single opt-in, geographically targeted subscribers are only $.05 each! Full name, date, time, and IP are included. Sign up now: http://www.hiplists.com/addyourlist/ __________________________________________ 互户互户互户互互户互)  Webbies... "I wish life had an UNDO function." Compliments of http://www.Coolsigs.com ----<<>>----<<>>----<<>>----<<>>----<<>>----<<>>----<<>> E D I T O R' S N O T E ----<<>>----<<>>----<<>>----<<>>----<<>>----<<>>----<<>> Happy Friday! Can you believe it Feb 28th already? Where did that come from? I don't know about you but there's something about the short months that really screw me up. It just doesn't seem natural for a month to have only 28 days. Who came up with that brilliant idea. So due to the short month I'm publishing 2 days early. If you're a new subscriber welcome, and I encourage you to stick around for a few issues and give us chance. I think you'll like it. Promise. I suppose you've heard about Mr. Rogers dying yesterday. Now I know I'm getting old. I was never a big fan, something about a grown man in slippers in a sweater talking in a baby voice that really bothered me, even when I was little. Don't get me wrong, I'm sorry he died, that's sad, it's as if a piece of my childhood had died with him. Do yourself a favor and don't grow up or old, it doesn't pay. It's sad to watch those who were staples when you grew up all start to slowly die. The clock is ticking for all of us my friend, make the most of it. Have you heard about Overture's activities lately? Seems they've pulled out their wallet and went on a spending spree. In one week they bought Altavista for 140 million and as if that wasn't enough they bought Fast (Alltheweb.com) for another 100 million. Boy, I wish I had that kind of money. They just threw out 240 million like it was nothing. They must be making big bucks off their PPC listings. Now I know why they recently doubled the minimum bids they needed to pay for these 2 new search engines. What bothers me is what are they up to? I mean what would they want with these two properties. Do you have any ideas? If so pass em on mailto:merle@merlesworld.com If you missed these hot stories you can review them here: Overture Buys Fast http://tinyurl.com/6mkk Overture Buys Altavista http://uk.news.yahoo.com/030219/95/dtl5b.html Back on the email filtering front I read an interesting statistic the other day from Email Marketing Results that stated false sp*m reports block up to 15% of permission based email. That means you're missing 15% of your legit email thanks to your ISP filtering your mail or your use of filtering software incorrectly. Remember, if you do filter your own email make sure you check the deleted folder of all the "junk" it catches before you click delete. You may be throwing out some very important email that you wish to read (like this ezine). Heads up for those of you using Hotmail or Yahoo or AOL please add this ezines email address of.... mmezine@merlesworld.com to your "friend list" or "approved" senders" list, address book. I recently changed the email address so if you were housing the old one please change it to this one. In the future any and all bounces will be automatically taken off this list so if you want to keep every issue coming make sure you do this so we don't get bounced or sent to your trash bin accidently. Thanks for joining me, let's get to the good stuff. If you have any comments you can send them to mailto:merle@merlesworld.com Merle http://www.MerlesWorld.com http://www.EzineAdAuction.com http://www.MCPromotions.com -------------------------------------------------- IN THIS ISSUE -------------------------------------------------- => 1. News From the Net => 2. Feature Article-'What's Wrong With My Website?' => 3. Webmaster Resources => 4. Promotional Resources => 5. Other Ezines of Interest => 6. Just for Fun or Useful => 7. E Books and Things of Interest to Publishers => 8. Freeware and Shareware to Download => 9.Subscribe/Remove Information --------------------------------------------------------------- 1. NEWS FROM THE NET -------------------------------------------------------------- Google Buys Blogging Company http://searchenginewatch.com/sereport/03/02-blogger.html --------- Overture Buys Fast http://www.internetnews.com/IAR/article.php/1598601 --------- U.S. To Seize Illegal Domain Names http://thewhir.com/marketwatch/dom022703.cfm -------- Online Auction Scams Cost Users Thousands http://digitalmass.boston.com/news/2003/02/28/online_scam.html ------- French Ban Sp*m http://www.europemedia.net/shownews.asp?ArticleID=15176 ---<<+>>-----<<+>>-----<<+>>-----<<+>>-----<<+>>-----<<+>> Please Support our Sponsors ---<<+>>-----<<+>>-----<<+>>-----<<+>>-----sponsor adv "Traveling and Can't Get Your Email?" Don't let this happen to you. With "WebMail" domain email accounts, you can access your mail 24 hours a day- 7 days a week. Usable ANYWHERE! Perfect for business or personal use. Why Take Chances? Go to.. http://tinyurl.com/5xcz --------------------------------------------- 2. FEATURE ARTICLE --------------------------------------------- 'What's Wrong With My Website?' by Michael Southon I ask myself that question about once a month. My website looks fine to me, but what are other people seeing? And what are the Search Engines seeing? Here's a checklist of 10 ways to keep your website at peak performance: 1. Browser Compatibility The first thing is to look at your website through other people's browsers. I do this regularly and I've sometimes been shocked at what I saw! ANYBROWSER http://www.anybrowser.com 2. Broken Links About 5% of all links on the Internet are broken. A site that contains broken links gives a bad impression to visitors and is a frequent cause of lost sales. Also, the major Search Engines and Directories will not list your page if it contains any broken links or missing images. Here are some free link validators: LINK SCAN http://www.elsop.com/linkscan/quickcheck.html NET MECHANIC http://www.netmechanic.com/maintain.htm WEBSITE GARAGE DEADLINK CHECK http://websitegarage.netscape.com/O=wsg/tuneup_plus/index.html 3. Web Safe Colors Are the colors on your web site displaying properly on other people's browsers? You may have a beautiful shade of lilac on your index page but it could look very strange on someone else's computer. There are only 216 colors that you can safely use on the Web. These colors display solid and consistent on any computer monitor or web browser that is able to display at least 8-bit color. The Web Safe Palette contains six groups of colors with 36 colors per group. These 216 web safe colors can have any combination of the following RGB (Red Green Blue) values: 0, 51, 102, 153, 204, 255 (each RGB value must be divisible by 51). Here's a good palette of web safe colors: WEB-SOURCE SAFE COLORS http://www.web-source.net/216_color_chart.htm 4. ALT Tags ALT Tags allow you to give an alternative to people who have the 'view images' function turned off in their browser. Let's say the navigation system on your website is a series of buttons that link to other pages on your site. If you don't have ALT Tags, people who have the 'view images' function turned off will be unable to navigate through your site - in place of your button they will just see an empty space. But an ALT Tag allows you to tell those people what that button does. For example, if the button is a link to your 'Site Map' you could insert the following ALT Tag: Click here to view Site Map ALT Tags also allow you to raise your keyword density. For every image that is not hyperlinked you could insert your main keywords. For example: airfares cheap discount flights 5. Meta Tags Meta Tags are so important they deserve a whole article on their own. The most important Meta Tags are the Title Tag, the Keywords Tag and the Description Tag. The Title Tag should be no more than 64 characters (longer than that and it will be cut off in some Search Engines). The Keyword Tag should contain about 5 to 10 keywords that appear on your page. Never include words that do not appear on that page - in some Search Engines your website will be penalized for this. Do not repeat the same keyword - this is called 'keyword stuffing' and is also frowned upon by the Search Engines. Separate your keywords with spaces (not commas). This allows the Search Engines to combine your keywords into phrases, for people who do 'phrase searching'. The Description Tag should be no more than 200 characters.Include as many of your keywords as you can. Remember also that your Description Tag must be enticing - it must make people want to visit your site. Here are some programs that will generate your Meta Tags for you: WEBSITE GARAGE http://websitegarage.netscape.com/turbocharge/metatag/ META MEDIC http://www.northernwebs.com/set/setsimjr.html MULTI-META-MAKER http://www.multimeta.com/tools/multimetamaker.html 6. Load Time A slow-loading index page is one of the main reasons for lost sales. The generally accepted maximum time for a page to load is around 15 seconds. Here is a free service that tells you how long your web page takes to load: NETMECHANIC http://tinyurl.com/6mlz Your pages should be no more than about 30Kb in size. To calculate the size of your web page, highlight the HTML document and then click on 'File' and 'Properties' and note down the file size. Then do the same for any graphics you have on that page. Then add those figures together to get your page size. If your page is less than 30Kb and takes more than 15 seconds to load, the problem is most likely with your web host. The solution is to change web host. Here are 2 services that will check the speed of your web host's server and compare it with other web hosts: HOST COMPARE http://www.hostcompare.com/testtools.htm CNET WEBSERVICES http://webservices.cnet.com/ping/ 7. GIF (or JPEG) Cruncher Shrinking the size of your images is one of the best ways to get a faster-loading web page. You can usually reduce a GIF or JPEG image by 40% to 50% without losing any significant definition or sharpness. SPINWAVE http://www.spinwave.com/crunchers.html 8. HTML Optimizer Another way to make your page load faster is to compress (or optimize) your HTML code. An HTML Optimizer removes all blank spaces in your HTML code and also removes certain unnecessary tags. On average, an HTML optimizer will reduce the size of your page by 15% to 20%. That percentage may not seem much, but the saving in load time is much higher, as your visitor's browser will parse your page much more efficiently. A word of caution: in most HTML Optimizers you will find an 'Options' menu that tells the program to ignore certain parts of your code. Make sure your Optimizer does not compress embedded script tags - if they get compressed, the script will usually not work. ADVANCED HTML OPTIMIZER http://www.pcbit.com/htmlopt/ 9. WIDTH, HEIGHT and BORDER Tags The WIDTH, HEIGHT and BORDER attributes are essential for each image that you have on your website. When you hyperlink an image, always make sure that the BORDER attribute is set to zero (BORDER=0). If you don't do this, your hyperlinked image will have an ugly blue border around it. The WIDTH and HEIGHT attributes allow your page to load faster, as the browser knows in advance how much space the image requires. To find out the width and height of any image, just double click on the image file. This will automatically open 'Microsoft Photo Editor' - your image will appear, with the width and height of your image (in pixels) displayed on the tool bar. 10. HTML Validators Always check the validity of your HTML. Some Search Engines give lower rankings to pages that have poor quality HTML (such as incorrect nesting of elements). Here are some free online validators: HTML HELP http://www.htmlhelp.org/tools/validator/ BOBBY http://www.cast.org/bobby/ WATSON http://watson.addy.com/ Written by: ---------------------------------------- Michael Southon is the author of the popular new E-Book, 'Ezine Writer!'. Discover the #1 Secret of Ezine Marketing - More Traffic, More Sales: http://www.ezine-writer.com/ ---------------------------------------- ------------------------------------------------ 3. WEBMASTER RESOURCES ------------------------------------------------- FREE JAVA SCRIPTS You'll want to bookmark this site as it's loaded with fun online Java generators for your website. Add pop up windows, bookmark us scripts, date and time scripts and more. You'll have a lot of fun with these and increase your site's usefulness all at the same time. http://www.templatedepot.com/javascripts.htm ---------- NEW WEBSITE.COM Host up to 200 websites for only 29.00 a month. If you've got multiple business projects going online this one is for you. They also offer cheaper hosting for regular singular accounts at a reduced rate. http://www.newwebsite.com/msmerle --------- DROP DOWN MENU GENERATOR Want to add a cool drop down menu to your website? Do it easily with this online tool. Follow the steps and you'll have your menu up and running in a flash. http://www.thesitewizard.com/wizards/navigationmenu.shtml -------- FORM PROCESSOR SCRIPT If you've been looking for a nice little secure form processing script check out this one at Big Nose Bird. Nice price of free, easy to install and works like a charm. http://www.bignosebird.com/carchive/bnbform.shtml -------- MISTER.NET Fast, efficient, reliable, FREE Web Hosting with no banner ads or pop-ups. Simply register a new domain or transfer your existing one and get FREE Web Hosting Forever! 29.00 one time fee, and your domain is hosted for life. Not a bad deal as some people pay this a month. http://mister.net/ ====================================== Tip ====================================== Cascading Style Sheets Tip Are you sick and tired of those lines under your links on your web pages? You don't have to live with them. Get rid of them once and for all by adding this to your CSS style sheet or in your page headers. =========================================== ----------------------------------------------- 4. PROMOTIONAL RESOURCES ----------------------------------------------- "Only $10.00 to Advertise?" Sure you can, at EzineAdAuction.com it's EASY! You'll reach Thousands of prospective customers in the process.Why Waste hundreds of dollars on advertising when you can test your ad campaigns so inexpensively with us. The answer for a "small ad budget". Click Here to start Saving.. http://EzineAdAuction.com ------- Website Promotion Tips and Advice http://www.smartwebby.com/website_promotion/promotion_tips.asp ------ Looking to increase your website's traffic? It's easy. Just read over some of the articles at this site and you'll be an expert on the topic in no time at all. http://www.websitegoodies.com/promote/articles.shtml ---<<+>>-----<<+>>-----<<+>>-----<<+>>-----<<+>>-----<<+>> Please Support our Sponsors ---<<+>>-----<<+>>-----<<+>>-----<<+>>-----sponsor adv/ -------------------------------------------- Website Need Visitors?? We GUARANTEE visitors that stay!! ------------------------------------------------ Being a sponsor of our game GUARANTEES that people will actually look at your web site. We guarantee thousands of people will look at your site or product for 20+ seconds each. To learn more visit: http://www.iwinweekly.com/advertise.php3 (2x) ---------------------------------------------- 5. OTHER EZINES OF INTEREST ---------------------------------------------- If you'd like to swap ads with this ezine please send your requests to mailto:adswap@merlesworld.com Please include your ezine name and the number of subscribers. --------------------------- ATTENTION SMALL BUSINESS OWNERS! If you're trying to market your Website and are not sure where to turn, subscribe to M.C. Promotions Press Newsletter and get the information you need to be a success online. Sure-Fire Promotion/Marketing Tips. Sites that will help you. Little known advertising tricks.....and much more. Start increasing traffic to your site Now http://www.mcpromotionspress.com or send mailto:subscribe@mcpromotions.com ------- ParentPreneur Weekly Ezine is geared towards parents working from home. Subscribe today and get HOT news & access to the latest tools & tips for home workers. All new subscribers will receive FREE gifts mailto:mcp-subscribe@parentpreneurclub.com http://www.parentpreneurclub.com?s00mcp ======================================================= <<<< T H E O R I G I N A L E Z I N E - R I N G >>>> Free Samples of the Best Internet Marketing Ezines ... Previous: mailto:mewsletter@autobots.net Next: mailto:2000fastracksample@sendfree.com *Full List and 3 Freebies: mailto:ering15@writead.com* ======================================================= -------------------------------------------- 6. JUST FOR FUN OR USEFUL -------------------------------------------- FREE TAX RETURNS Don't have money to pay someone to do your taxes? If you are a taxpayer with an Adjusted Gross Income of $12,000 or below; OR age 50* and above, regardless of income, you are encouraged to take advantage of this special offer. http://www.taxbrain.com/openaccess/irs.htm ---------- CREATE CD Use this website to create a PDF file which can be printed and folded to create a paper CD case. If you don't want to fill in all of the tracks use the database and pick your artist and title to have the template automatically filled in. Print it out and follow the simple folding technique and viola, it's a instant cd case. http://www.papercdcase.com/ ------ OVERSTOCK Want to get some great deals on electronics, jewelry and sports items? Save over 70% everyday at Overstock. http://www.overstock.com/ ----- TIME CAVE Ever wish you could schedule delivery of an email? With this site you can compose emails then schedule a date in the future to have them automatically sent. If you've been thinking of quitting your job you could compose a "nice" email to be sent to your boss the day after your gone. Great possibilities! http://www.TimeCave.com ---<<+>>-----<<+>>-----<<+>>-----<<+>>-----<<+>>-----<<+>> Please Support our Sponsors ---<<+>>-----<<+>>-----<<+>>-----<<+>>-----sponsor adv/ TIRED OF PAYING TOO MUCH TAX TO THE IRS? New eBook reveals 29 little-known legal loopholes that will reduce your taxes by thousands for self-employed people and small business owners only!) If you are serious about paying less tax . . . CLICK HERE =>http://tinyurl.com/3ywe ---------------------------------------------------------- 7. E BOOKS AND THINGS OF INTEREST TO EZINE PUBLISHERS _________________________________________________ Do You Write Articles? If so why not submit them to one of the largest article databases online today. Imagine Free exposure of your work, as it's reprinted in ezines and websites across the Internet. Be seen by thousands by submitting your writings now to... http://www.Family-Content.com --------- INSTANT PDF GENERATOR What if there was a way to create a PDF Document that was affordable, reliable and only required one click of your mouse to use? Now there is. Imagine the uses as you create downloadable e-books and files for your website. http://tinyurl.com/2bsl ---------------------------------------------- 8. FREEWARE- SHAREWARE- TRIALS TO DOWNLOAD ---------------------------------------------- PHOTOPLUS 5.5 "Once you've got your image into PhotoPlus, you can enhance and alter its on screen appearance with a diverse toolkit of functions and effects. A full range of export options (with special attention to Web graphics), plus powerful optimization capabilities, round out this high performing package. "Free to download. http://tinyurl.com/6ml1 --------- FREE SCREEN CAPTURE TOOL "GrabClipSave makes use of standard Windows features: as soon as you press the PrtSc-key, the current screen is copied to the clipboard. GCS just sits in the background and waits for a bitmap in the c clipboard. When there is a new one, it just saves it to disk; where You want and the way You want." http://www.boumchalak.de/Tools/GCS/gcs.html --------- STAR DOWNLOADER "Star Downloader is a download accelerator that can increase download speeds by up to 400 percent. Unlike similar applications, it is completely free. It does not contain any banner ads or spy-ware.The acceleration is achieved by splitting the file being downloaded into several parts and downloading these parts at the same time. Download speeds are further increased by downloading the file from the fastest mirror sites." http://stardownloader.com/ ------- AD AWARE Ad-aware is a free multi spyware removal utility that scans your memory, registry and hard drives for known spyware and scumware components and lets you remove them safely. You may be surprised at what you find on your hard drive. http://www.lavasoft.de/ ---<<+>>-----<<+>>-----<<+>>-----<<+>>-----<<+>>-----<<+>> Please Support our Sponsors ---<<+>>-----<<+>>-----<<+>>-----<<+>>-----sponsor adv/ WEBMASTER IN A BOX A pretty comprehensive suite of do-it-yourself scripts if you want to cut down some of your programming costs: The WebmasterInABox is a suite of 20 of the most essential, absolutely-must-have software programs to help you automate many of your day-to-day tasks and give you back more time to spend on promoting your site and products. The collection has scripts for tracking your links and redirecting url's, for automating some of you list management, Recommend Us, Form-mailer with autoresponse, and many more. http://tinyurl.com/3leq ------------------------------------------ 9.IMPORTANT STUFF ------------------------------------------ Well, that wraps it up,once again thanks for joining me. If you have any comments please send them to comments@merlesworld.com or visit http://www.MerlesWorld.com For advertising rates for this ezine send... mailto:advertising@merlesworld.com Current subscriber base is over 5,000- My list is clean as all email addresses are removed the very first time they bounce. Back issues can be reviewed here... http://www.MerlesMission.com If you would like to be taken off our mailing list: PLEASE click on the link at the very bottom of this ezine for instant removal. If you are not a subscriber and would like to be send mailto:subscribe@merlesworld.com *********************************** For more information: http://www.MerlesMission.com *************************************** For great web hosting or if you're in need of a programmer contact mailto:DavidBlack@SiteDesignandHosting.com He's wonderful and an expert at what he does. Tell him "Merle" sent ya. P.S. I am currently in need of testimonials for this ezine. If you enjoy it please let me know. Send to mailto:testimonials@MerlesWorld.com ========================== If you haven't yet filled in the subscriber survey, get your free gifts by doing it now..and be entered into a drawing for a free ad in this ezine. Winner pulled twice a month. You'll find the survey at: http://www.advancedsurvey.com/ when there put 901 into the survey number box at the top left to take the survey. -------------- I'm now offering my articles for syndication on your website All you have to do is paste SOME code where you want the article to appear and every 10 to 14 days when I update it on my end it will display a fresh article on web design/ maintenance on your site. Easy to do and gives you fresh content without any work whatsoever. For more info and to get to the code go to.... http://www.merlesworld.com/SyndicationColumns/syndication_columns.htm Thanks for being a subscriber and I'll see you next time! If you enjoy this ezine and would like to make a small donation please go to ... http://tinyurl.com/21se ----<<>>----<<>>----<<>>----<<>>----<<>>----<<>>----<<>>---- IMPORTANT DISCLAIMER ========================= Disclaimer: Merle's World does not accept any responsibility for any liabilities as resulting from any claims in this newsletter or by the advertisers in it. This newsletter is for informational purposes only. We respect your privacy and do not share our mailing list with anyone. All content provided "as is" without warranty of any kind. Copyright 2001-2003 All Rights Reserved